Karma Books to Publish Bill Powers Novella With Richard Prince Cover

The next book from the Karma bookstore‘s in-house imprint will be a novella by dealer and art world personality Bill Powers, Gallerist has learned. The artist Richard Prince has provided cover art for the book, titled What We Lose in Flowers…, which incorporates DVD labels, a convention seen at his recent show at Salon 94, and at Guild Hall last summer, in his “Covering Pollock” show.

The novella will the next in a series that has included Hanna Liden, Bjarne Melgaard and Sam Falls.

“There isn’t a huge directive on what we publish, it’s a pretty wide net,” said Karma founder Brendan Dugan. “That’s what’s exciting—you have one thing that’s a truly visual artist’s book, one thing that’s writing by an artist, like Bjarne’s book, and now this fictional book by Bill, someone who’s been around the art world for a long time.” He added that there’s another work by a new author in the offing, that involves some “Hunter S. Thompson-style journalism,” about a retreat frequented by gay priests. “I like the idea that the books aren’t in one specific kind of genre,” Mr. Dugan said.

Mr. Powers’s book tells the story of a Peter Beard-Julian Schnabel-esque artist in a deteriorating relationship with a younger woman who used to date his son. The book opens with a epigraph from John Currin, “Culture is for old people. When you’re young you have your body, and that’s all you need,” and is dedicated to the recently deceased John McWhinnie, who introduced Mr. Prince and Mr. Powers. This is actually a second fictional outing from Mr. Powers, a former editor at Blackbook, whose first was a novel titled Tall Island.

The books will retail for $20 with a run of 1,000 copies—500 with the Richard Prince cover and 500 with the book’s back cover as its front cover. There will be a release party and signing at Karma, on Downing Street, on March 6.